Sasti copy Part 2, 3, 4…: Why Kangana Ranaut vs Taapsee Pannu has become Bollywood’s longest-running unwanted franchise
There are great Bollywood friendships that have lasted decades and there are legendary fallouts between people who once worked together. And then there is Kangana Ranaut and Taapsee Pannu: two actors who, remarkably, say they have never even met each other, yet have managed to sustain one of Hindi cinema’s longest-running public feuds.
Seven years after the words sasti copy first entered Bollywood’s gossip vocabulary, the phrase is back.
At the India Today Women Summit on August 22, Taapsee was asked whether she had resolved her differences with Kangana. She responded that she had never met Kangana and suggested their respective opinions and ways of speaking reflected their different upbringings and ways of looking at the world. Kangana interpreted the remark as an attack on her parents and responded through an Instagram Story, again using the sasti copy jibe and referring to Taapsee’s upcoming Gandhari as a B-grade film. Taapsee subsequently posted the cryptic words, “Hence proved.”
Predictably, headlines followed. But perhaps the most interesting question isn’t what Kangana said about Taapsee or what Taapsee meant about Kangana.
It is this: Why were we discussing their feud again in the first place?
This isn’t an argument between two friends whose relationship deteriorated. It isn’t a fight between former co-stars. It isn’t even two people who regularly occupy the same social circle. According to both the current coverage and Taapsee herself, they haven’t met. Yet their feud has acquired something resembling franchise status.
Every few years comes another instalment. There are recurring characters, familiar dialogue, flashbacks to previous episodes and, inevitably, a fresh headline involving those two words: “sasti copy”. And that is where this stops being merely a Kangana-Taapsee story. It becomes a story about Bollywood media.
Celebrity interviews today operate inside a brutal attention economy. An actor can spend 40 minutes discussing preparation, filmmaking, character and craft. Yet the 35-second answer involving another celebrity is often the clip most likely to travel across Instagram, X, YouTube Shorts and entertainment websites. The algorithm has effectively become an invisible interviewer. It tells everyone what works.
A comment about a co-star works better than a comment about screenplay structure. A relationship question travels further than discussion about cinematography. A feud performs better than a compliment. And everyone understands the rules.
The interviewer knows the controversial question can create a headline. The celebrity knows the answer might become tomorrow’s viral clip. The celebrity being discussed can respond on social media and generate the next cycle. Websites report the response. Paparazzi then ask another celebrity about that response. The reaction becomes another headline. And suddenly an argument from 2019 has produced content in 2026.
Of course, media alone cannot be blamed.
Actors possess the most powerful weapon against an unwanted question: I don’t want to discuss it. Taapsee could have declined to answer. Kangana could have ignored the remark. Either decision would probably have ended the news cycle. Neither did.
There is an additional irony here. Taapsee is currently preparing for the September 3 release of Gandhari. Yet one of the biggest conversations around her over the weekend wasn’t about Devashish Makhija’s film, her performance, or what audiences should expect from it. It was once again Kangana Ranaut.
Kangana too has an active career, including another collaboration with filmmaker AL Vijay.
Two accomplished female actors with completely different filmographies continue to remain linked by a phrase coined seven years ago. Perhaps the next evolution in Bollywood promotions shouldn’t be celebrities becoming less outspoken. It should be interviewers becoming more unpredictable.
Ask something the star hasn’t answered 17 times already. Find the contradiction in their career rather than the controversy in their contact list. Make the conversation itself interesting enough that it doesn’t require another celebrity’s name to become viral.
Because at this stage, another Kangana-versus-Taapsee headline isn’t revealing anything new about either woman. It is revealing something about us.
Bollywood’s most durable franchises aren’t always created by producers. Sometimes the media creates them, one question at a time.
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